It nudges you from your shallow sleep,
it whispers love-mockeries.

Though you learned the dance routines they made you learn
         and you were 1996 Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl
            and you were 1996 America's Royal Little Miss

Beyond our seed-littered pond a small forest of bamboo grows wild.
Hear the wind-rustling like shaken paper? Bamboo.

Numbskull, inject
At first there seems a placid lake
      on which

Ah well, I walk out into the road all fancied up.
I must admit I feel fine. But, you see,
A statement of this sort is misleading.

I am William, who by nature needs to chant     triste now, I’ll make
this song from it

see my daughter’s curved hocks and
haunches, her hips that behind my back have
swelled until they taper delicious 

After Marcus Licinius Crassus
defeated the army of Spartacus,
he crucified 6,000 men.

More and more, along the shore
of the Northeast Corridor, 
birds are standing in alcoves like telephone booths

They seem to be gliding toward me, in dresses,
they float and turn, in summer floral, the
ladies of the fruit trees, in ruffles, in dishevel,